We originally had booked in for the final pre-handover inspection on Wednesday, but Metricon had to move it to today (Friday) as they wanted to get more painting fixes done before presenting to us.

It was busy at the house when we arrived with Simon, our Site Manager going over things with one of Metricon’s QA guys (Mick). Theo from New Home Inspections (who was doing our independent inspection) was also there, and a few tradies doing maintenance works such as putting locks on doors.

Its been a few weeks since we have been inside the house and it was very exciting to see that we are so close to finishing. Having an independent inspector was good as he would pick up any structural or building regulation issues which we would not know about. Theo did pick up a few items, one of the major ones was the surface finish and cracks in the garage which will need to be topped up with more cement concrete.

Armed with a box of red dots, we went through the house with Simon inspecting the finishes. Anywhere we found a fault (eg paint blemish, cracks, holes, damage etc) we put a red dot so they can be fixed prior to PCI (Practical Completion Inspection). Metricon will have a combined list of defects from their QA person, New Home Inspections Report and our list of defects to fix next week.

It was good to see Simon pick up a few issues as well as it shows he wants us to have a quality house. Some of the defects we found included:

Scratches in floorboard (hopefully these can be fixed up well).

Damaged fly wire screens.

Front door lock mechanism needed adjusting.

Light switch not working

Power switch plate had a white plate when it should have been a metal/chrome plate.

Scratch in powder room mirror.

Early next week will also see the final electrical items go in, including all the kitchen appliances, hot water system, outdoor fan and ducted vacuum.

Here’s a few photos we took today:

Our pretty house!!

Pillar lights

Pillar Lights from another angle

Today was the first time we saw the stain on the stairs which has definitely finished off the stairs quite well.

Stained stairs

Close up of stairs

View of the stairs from above

View of stairs from leisure room.

Bi-fold doors complete with door handle

Close up of door handle on bi-fold

Laundry splash back

Laundry splash back

Lock and handle on sliding door to powder room

Study ‘feature’ door now complete with handle

Balcony complete with wire balustrades

Some of the dots throughout the house indicating a defect

Aircon unit

Speaking with Simon, we are his last house in the Northern Suburbs. Due to some changes at Metricon he is now working out in the East (around the Wantirna area). Whoever has him now will be in good hands.

Another stage complete, another invoice. During the week we completed the Fixing Stage. We are now down to the final straight to the finish line.

All the cabinets have been installed, the tiles have been delivered and painting should be just around the corner. The fixing stage also includes the completion of the internal plaster, architraves and skirting, stairs, basins, troughs and sinks, internal doors, cabinets and cupboards.

We have also organised a time in a few weeks for the curtain maker to meet us and Simon on site to do some window measurements. The curtains will take about 6 weeks to make so getting them measured up now will mean they will be ready for handover.

Garage – ceiling is now plastered.

We are very happy with our colour selections of Pumice (the lighter colour) and Expresso Ligna (the darker one) for the cabinet laminex.

Kitchen

Kitchen

Kitchen – the desk area is a good use of the space.

Kitchen

View of the island bench

Kitchen – the gap in the middle is where the oven and cook-top will go.

Yesterday we got an SMS to notify that the Lock-Up invoice has been emailed to us and that the original is in the mail. Sure enough, when we checked our email we had the invoice for Lock-Up in our inbox.

Today we noticed that the kitchen cabinets appear now to be complete with handles, minus the Caesar Stone benchtops. The laundry cabinets also look like they have been completed too. The cabinet installation forms part of the Fixing stage and based on the current indications from Simon, we are not far from reaching completion of this stage too.

This weekend on Saturday we had our second visit to Studio M. The first being two weeks ago for an introductory tour to acquaint ourselves with the selection process and various options. Our aim for the visit was to come up with our kitchen colour scheme – cabinets, benchtop and splashback. We really want to make sure that we are well prepared for our colour selection appointment and essentially have most things already picked out before then.

We spent about three hours there and we are pleased to report that the afternoon was a success. We managed to narrow down our colour scheme to a couple of different choices which we can now play around with and match up with our various tile selections to come up with a finale colour pallet.

We also managed to select our laundry benchtop and timber floor. It was definitely a worthwhile exercise as we found that we were a bit lost to start with. We started out with heaps of different selections and gradually, through a process of elimination, got down to our final couple of choices. We both agreed that we wouldn’t want to be doing this for the first time when we have our colour selection appointment.

We have visited almost every Metricon display home around Melbourne to help us work out what we want in our home. We have found that seeing colour schemes and layouts in person and to scale has helped us in our decision making compared with trying to make choices based on the small sample swatches we have collected. Another useful thing we have done is obtain the colour schedules from our Metricon Sales Consultant for the display homes we have liked so we can get the exact colours, sizes, finishes etc. without having to make educated guesses all the time. Our Sales Consultant, Melissa has been really responsive in providing this information to us.

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